![]() ![]() Users can search for a concept or a category and immediately access hundreds of potential innovations that are related to their query. Mergeflow's software, which was used by BMW to build the company's tech radar, scans thousands of scientific and technological publications, patents, news, market analyses, investor activities and other data every day. "It's pretty much all in the web, but you can't collect and analyse all of the data by yourself. "People come to us because they know that there is something somewhere," Florian Wolf, the founder of Mergeflow, tells ZDNet. Mergeflow, for example, is a Germany-based startup that automates the process of hunting for innovation. Setting up a strategy for discovering emerging technologies might seem like a daunting task, especially for smaller organisations, but a growing number of tools are now being built to help. Indicators included the presence of teams tasked specifically with innovation and incubation, or the quantity of public communications about innovation made by the business. The only times where that relationship could be established, said the researchers, was when the business had established a well-defined innovation strategy in addition to investing. The Harvard Business Review's researchers found that there is no statistically significant relationship between a firm's investment in basic, exploratory R&D and its stock market value. So what's next? It's one thing to set aside a budget for innovation, but it takes more than spending to boost the chances of finding a game-changing technology. If you don't do that, you're not recovering to the same level," he says. "Even though you have to think about recovery and stability, I still think that a lot of innovation is tied to embryonic emerging technology and taking advantage of that. ![]() Now that companies are in the recovery stage, Dawson is convinced that the gap will widen between businesses that continue investing in innovation and those that decide to go back to their old ways. Case in point: Dawson noted that Gartner enquiries during the pandemic went up 30% in volume. In other words, companies realised that unlocking money to transform their operations could create huge benefits. The health crisis drove business agility, as organisations scrambled to adapt to new ways of working, and this also translated into budget agility. But according to Dawson, mentalities are changing fast - largely because of the huge transformations that were forced upon businesses in the last months as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's easy to see why companies would hesitate to invest in emerging technologies, when there's no assurance that they will ever see their money's worth in business value. A more recent survey by KPMG stressed that innovation teams within organisations are still small, with 38% of respondents reporting that their teams were smaller than 10 people. Looking at long-term trends, researchers have found that since the 1980s, US companies have reduced spending on basic, exploratory science and engineering. Yet many companies struggle to see the value of dedicating money to exotic-sounding technologies - think quantum computing, but also hydroponics or 3D printing, all the way to self-healing materials or smart textiles. This led to drilling costs falling by 15%, saving an average $90 million per year per subsidiary. ![]() After reviewing 7,000 drilling projects, examining the career history for over 30,000 engineers and holding interviews with managers and executives, the researchers found that the company had spent billions of dollars on R&D every year and generated almost 10,000 patents. "The next horizon is higher-risk, but it will really take you to a new business opportunity and enable real growth."įor example, a recent study carried out by the Harvard Business Review analysed data from a multinational oil company to assess whether the firm's efforts in R&D had paid off. "You have to understand and track what's cool, what's emerging, and then see where you can innovate," says Dawson. But Dawson argues that organisations should also keep in mind the "far horizon", which comes with higher risks but much better rewards. SEE: The CIO's new challenge: Making the case for the next big thingīudgeting for the near-term and aiming for measurable returns on investment (ROI) remains key. ![]()
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